James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (4 page)

Crutch said, “Physical descriptions?”

Scotty smiled. “They wore masks. The female victims described them as being ‘normally endowed.' ”

“Endowed”—
huh
?—Bobby and Phil slack-jawed it. Crutch smirked. Scotty grabbed the beer and pizza debris and fobbed it off on him. A sausage morsel hit Scotty's suit coat. Phil trembled and flicked it off.

Scotty got in his car and peeled out eastbound. Crutch eyeballed a blonde at the gas pumps.

Phil said, “He thinks he's tough, but I know I could take him.”

The lot re-dozed. Bobby landed a rope job. His pet Jew lawyer came by and fed him the gist. It's a horny hubby-hooker parlay. The wife's the client. Rent a hot-sheet room and find hubby at his favorite gin mill. Facilitate a chance meeting. Get me snapshots and film.

Buzz Duber cruised by. Crutch ran the Hughes deal by him. Buzz got a brainstorm. He said he knew this nigger midget. The guy played pygmies in jungle flicks. They could send him up to Howard Hughes' lair in a room-service cart.

Freddy Otash cruised by. He'd lost some weight. He bragged up this low-roller hotel he'd bought in Vegas. He threw Phil a tail job. Phil drove off, half-blitzed.

Crutch and Buzz got dozy from too much beer and pizza. Crutch got doze blips of Dana Lund, softly window-lit.

A horn blared way too loud. Crutch opened his eyes. Shit—there's Phil's pet shyster, Chick Weiss.

With his kike-kayak Cadillac. With his frizzy-ass hairdo and his British fop suit. With his fucked-up Caribbean-art fixation.

Weiss said, “I got a fruit gig for you. The guy likes to brown well-hung Filipinos, and I got a mutant packing 10½ inches. The wife wants a divorce, and who can blame her?”

The hubby had a fuck pad at the Ravenswood. Crutch brought a Rolleiflex with a flashbulb bar. Buzz wore door-kicker shoes.

The Mutant met them in the lobby. He had a door key. Crutch was miffed. He craved some kick-the-door-in action. They huddled. Crutch told the Mutant to get hubby in the sack pronto. Buzz told him to provide decent lighting. The Mutant told them to get his
schvantz
in the pix. He serviced spouses of both genders. He wanted more divorce work. He wanted his heavy-hung status proclaimed.

They cooked up a four-minute countdown. The Mutant skedaddled to
apartment 311. Crutch futzed with the camera and secured it A-OK. Buzz ticked seconds off on a stopwatch.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1—
go
.

They ran up the stairs. They cut down hallways and found 311. Buzz opened the door. Crutch hoisted the camera. They followed love grunts to a doorway and let fly.

It was all Greek. The Mutant poured hubby the pork with his monster meat in plain view. Crutch tripped the shutter.
Pop pop pop pop
—the bedroom went flashbulb-white blind. Hubby wailed the fruit-gig standard How Could You? blues. The Mutant pulled on his pants and went out the fire escape. Buzz saw a bag of weed on the dresser and swiped it. Crutch thought,
This is the life
.

Buzz said, “It had to be a yard long.”

Crutch said, “Under a foot. Remember, Chick Weiss gave us the measurement.”

Clyde Duber said, “We could use him again. Did you get his number?”

Buzz said, “We can find him through the Screen Actors Guild. He's playing the sidekick on some TV show.”

Clyde Duber's office, Beverly Hills. Knotty-pine walls, golf trophies and red leather. Dig the wall frieze:

It pertained to that big armored-car heist. Clyde grooved on it. The case was one big bug up his ass. There's an ink-stained bill behind glass. There's framed photos of blowtorched stiffs and loose emeralds. There's Sergeant Scotty Bennett. He's manhandling two male Negroes.

Clyde kept an amateur file on the case. It was his pet project. Scotty indulged him with knickknacks. Clyde loved Scotty's sweat-room tapes. They featured male Negroes screaming.

Crutch said, “Freddy Otash bought some hotel in Vegas.”

Clyde poured a triple scotch. “Freddy's a dipshit. Rumors are circulating, and that's all I can say about that.”

Buzz said, “Tell Dad about the Hughes deal.”

Crutch scratched his balls. “
Life
magazine's offering a million bucks for a photo of Howard Hughes. I think we can do it.”

Clyde made the jack-off sign.
Kids
—this white man's burden. Kid wheelmen, kid infiltrators, kid stakeout geeks.

Buzz nudged Crutch. “You got plans tonight?”

“I thought I'd drive around.”

“Shit, you're going to peep Chrissie Lund.”

Clyde said, “Who's Chrissie Lund?”

“She's USC frosh. She's got Crutch all wired.”

Clyde sipped scotch. “Don't do anything I wouldn't do. Like 459 PC, breaking and entering.”

Crutch blushed and checked the wall frieze. Memo: buy some tartan bow ties and get a Scotty Bennett crew cut.

Buzz seltzer-spritzed his scotch. “Get us a decoy job, Dad. Send us in to some Commie group.”

“Nix that. You're too green and you look too square. You've got to be able to talk Commie lifestyle shit to make those gigs work. You kids don't know from social upheaval. All you kids know from is this college-girl gash you can't get.”

Buzz laughed. Crutch blushed. Memo: study your file and prowl for Scotty's blow-job freaks.

“Who commissions those infiltration jobs?”

Clyde kicked his chair back. “Right-wing nuts with gelt. They're all doctors and kings. You've got Dr. Charles S. Toron, the Eugenics King. You've got Dr. Fred Hiltz, the Hate-Pamphlet King, and Dr. Wesley Swift, the Nazi-Bible King.”

Buzz said, “Dr. Fred's a dentist. The other guys have mail-order degrees, like all those coon preachers.”

Clyde said, “
Defrocked
dentist. He got strung out on anesthetic cocaine and started fucking peoples' teeth up.”

Crutch thought of Dana Lund. Memo: bring a soft-focus lens. Buzz whipped out that bag of weed. Clyde rolled his eyes
—kids
.

“That reminds me. Dr. Fred's got a job for us. A woman stole some money from him and absconded.”

Buzz looked at Clyde. Crutch looked at Clyde. Both looks said
Me
. Clyde flipped a coin. Buzz called tails. The coin hit the floor heads.

Crutch had a flop at the Vivian Apartments. It was a walk-up dive just south of Paramount. Grips and stagehands lived there. Bit players turned lunchtime tricks in a jumbo mop closet. Crutch crammed all his shit into two rooms.

His file shit, his camera shit, his car shit, his bug-and-tap shit. Clyde taught him surveillance. He had phone cords and wire mounts up the ying-yang. He had a full run of
Playboy
magazine. He had
Car Craft
back to '52. His wallpaper was forty-one Playboy Playmates.

He settled in for the night. He updated his notes on his mother's last known location. Christmas '67—Margaret Woodard Crutchfield writes from Des Moines. Every known records check—zero. Backtrack to '66—a Christmas card from Dubuque. Every in-between town, full records checks, zero.

Crutch got antsy. Buzz was who-knows-where, blitzed on who-knows-what. Buzz had this mean streak that he lacked. Buzz carried a fake cop's badge and coerced head out of hookers. Nix that. Holding it in was better.

It was warm out. A summer storm brewed. Crutch took a drive. He circled up to Hollywood Boulevard and out to the Strip. He looked at people. The longhaired girls jazzed him and the longhaired guys rubbed him wrong. He trawled for that '62 Bird and Scotty's blow-job bandits. He saw two fags in a '61 Bird and no more.

He drove east to Hancock Park. He cut his lights and perched at 2nd and Plymouth. That big Spanish house held him.

Window glow flickered, upstairs and down. He saw Chrissie in USC sweats—one glimpse and gone. He saw Dana tie her hair back in the kitchen.

Buzz didn't get it. Nobody got it. That's why he never told anyone. It wasn't Chrissie Lund. It was always Dana Lund, and she was fifty-three years old.

Dwight Holly

(Washington, D.C., 6/16/68)

S
POOKS:

The restaurant was thick with them. Mr. Hoover ran a head count. Dwight watched his eyes click. Colored waiters, colored lobbyist, colored baseball ace. The old poof was frail. He slurped his soup palsy-style. He'd lost some beats, his brain still sparked, his circuits cranked on
HATE
.

Harvey's Restaurant, midtown D.C., the big lunch rush. A big be-seen spot. Big eye-click action.

Mr. Hoover said, “Did Wayne Tedrow Jr. kill Wayne Tedrow Sr.?”

“Yes, Sir. He did.”

“Extrapolate, please.”

Dwight pushed his plate back. “Carlos Marcello bought off LVPD and the Clark County coroner. A blunt-force trauma homicide was ruled a heart attack.”

Mr. Hoover smiled. “Stroke would have affirmed the golf aspect.”

Dwight lit a cigarette. “I won't ask for more details, Sir. I'll commend your sources and move on.”

“Captain Bob Gilstrap and Lieutenant Buddy Fritsch viewed the crime scene. They were aware of the animus between Tedrow
père
and
fils
, and both officers are beholden to Mr. Marcello.”

“Mr. Marcello is a wonderful friend to the Nevada law-enforcement community, Sir. He sends lovely gift baskets at Christmas.”

Mr. Hoover
beamed
. “Really?”

“Yes, Sir. The false bottoms cover casino chips and hundred-dollar bills.”

Mr. Hoover
glowed
. “Did Junior take part in any recent Memphis operations that you might have heard about?”

Dwight winked. My lips are sealed. Mr. Hoover snagged a toast point and shooed off a waiter.

“You are an eloquent man, Dwight. You understand your audience and play to them inimitably.”

“I rise to the occasion of you, Sir. There's no more to it than that.”

Spook action stage left. A spook waiter sucked up to the spook baseball cat. Mr. Hoover tuned the banter out and tuned in to the spooks. He was seventy-three. His breath reeked. His cuticles bled. He lived off digitalis and skin-pop amphetamine. A Dr. Feelgood supplied daily injections.

Click—he's back again. Click—he's back to
you
.

“Our other homicides. The gaudier and more scrutinized ones likely to inspire loose talk.”

Dwight stubbed out his cigarette. “Ray and Sirhan are psychopaths, Sir. Their statements confirm their paranoia, and the American public has come to expect grandstanding delusion in its assassins. There
will
be loose talk, but it will be replaced by public indifference over time.”

“And the Tedrows? Are we exposed there? Reassure me in your most bluff-hearty manner.”

Dwight said, “Senior's death is in no way suspect. Yes, he ran Klan ops for us, but it's never become public knowledge. Yes, he peddled hate pamphlets, but he was never as publicly voluble as our hate-pamphleteering chum, Fred Hiltz. Yes, he was slated to take over Ward Littell's job for Howard Hughes, which might have created speculation. Yes, I think Junior will get the job now. No, I don't think that any of it will serve to expose us in any significant way.”

Mr. Hoover speared his last toast point. His hand trembled. Some table-hopping pols eyeballed him.

“Power. Was that Junior's motive?”

“I've known him all his life, Sir. I think ‘fully justified hatred' describes it best.”

A spook preacher braced the pols. Yuks and backslaps circulated. The guy wore cowboy boots with his clerical suit. Dwight recognized him. He hosted telethons for some spook disease and espoused leftist shit.

Mr. Hoover said, “Prince Bobby and Martin Lucifer King have departed, leaving the morally impaired disconsolate and providing the sane with dear relief. Operation Black Rabbit did not achieve the results we had hoped for, and toxic clouds of black nationalism are quite evidently aswirl. I would like you to assess the Black Panther Party and the United Slaves, also known as ‘US,' as potential targets for a disruption program.
I am thinking of a full-scale Cointelpro. There are also two lesser known cabals in Los Angeles that may also require scrutiny. Mark their lurid names: The Black Tribe Alliance and Mau-Mau Liberation Front.”

Dwight got goose bumps. “I have an informant in L.A. I'll fly out and talk to her.”

“
Her
, Dwight? Confidential Bureau informant number 4361?”

Dwight smiled. “Yes, Sir. We may be looking for an inside plant, and she knows every duplicitous left-winger in captivity.”

“All left-wingers should reside in captivity.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Stop by Las Vegas as well. Assess Wayne Tedrow Jr.'s mental health.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“The Mau-Maus were an African cannibal sect with no valid grievance. They diddled baboons and ate their own young.”

“Yes, Sir. I know about them.”

“Your knowledge does not surprise me. You're my obedient Yalie thug.”

He lived in hotel suites. Roving agents had Bureau-vouchered digs nationwide. He liked the Statler in L.A. and the Sheraton Chicago. The D.C. Mayflower was dud-ritz. The room service tanked, the pipes hissed, the bed creaked.

His study files and plane tickets were there on the desk. Mr. Hoover had them sent during lunch. Panthers/US/Mau-Mau/Tribe.
Mr. Hoover wanted this
. His L.A. flight left in two hours.

Dwight buffed his shoes, cleaned his gun and did doorway-bar chinups. Bullshit tasks quashed his nerves and kept him at one drink a night.
It was chilled
. RFK was all on Carlos. It was
his
wet dream. Sirhan Sirhan practically drooled. He'd never ID Otash credibly. Jimmy Ray got popped at the London airport. Extradition woe would extend. Jimmy would talk—that was certain. Otash ran him in circles. Jimmy's story would play as cracker fantasia.